Abstract

Background Our goal was to compare hospital scores from the most widely used commercial website in the USA to hospital scores from more
systematic measures of patient experience and outcomes, and to assess what drives variation in the commercial website scores.

Results Of hospitals reporting HCAHPS (n=3796), 962 (25%) had scores on Yelp. Among hospitals with >5 Yelp ratings, the correlation
of percent high ratings between Yelp and HCAHPS was 0.49 (p<0.001). The percent high ratings within each HCAHPS domain increased
monotonically with increasing Yelp scores (p≤0.001 for all domains). Percent high ratings in Yelp and HCAHPS were statistically
significantly correlated with lower mortality for myocardial infarction (MI; −0.19 for Yelp and −0.13 for HCAHPS) and pneumonia
(−0.14 and −0.18), and fewer readmissions for MI (−0.17 and −0.39), heart failure (−0.31 and −0.39), and pneumonia (−0.18
and −0.27).

Conclusions These data suggest that rater experiences for Yelp and HCAHPS may be similar, and that consumers posting ratings on Yelp
may observe aspects of care related to important patient outcomes.